130_Gina_Clover === Gina: I realized. Kind of a few years away from it. How I needed that because I, I needed to let go of a lot of things in my life that were still capitalistic, patriarchal. Even if I thought it was like a creative solution, I'm like, oh, I'm going to be happy here. I'm going to be happy here. So you have these experiences, apocalyptic things that take away, you're broke. You're humiliated. You're your life falls apart in a very concrete way. But the other aspect and the one we don't get to talk about enough is how there's like a piece of your soul that died because you believed in it. It's like the, the loss of a dream. It's like a real death, it's a real death. And so in addition to all these apocalyptic factors that could, can totally be burning away. You're left with like, who am I? Oh my God, my soul, my soul is broken. My soul is broken. And which is why I think that the rites of passage is so important because it gives us a real framework to actually step into like an orientation and power that acknowledges both the soul death, but a real rebirth to where you can like look at your entirely different way. === Monica: Welcome to The Revelation project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. Everyone is second, the revelation projects hoppy past guest. Today. I want to introduce you to my dear sister, friend and colleague Gina Clover. Gina is an animist, which, and rites of passage guide who centers her work around anti- capitalism and ecological re-enchantment. She offers radical presence and compassion to those who want to move into the seasonal reality of their lives in full awareness. That the world, as we've known, it is disintegrating bringing a collapsed, aware approach to moving into maturity and relational leadership. She believes we break the spell of modernity by doing this work together. Gina is also a plant medicine integration guide who loves to help people bring animist enchantment into their lives in the secular world. Gina holds an undergraduate degree in critical theory from NYU, as well as an MFA from USC's school of cinematic arts in writing for film and television. She's also a professional writer and she's excellent by the way. She currently lives in a 150 year old Victorian church in new York's Hudson valley, where she and her partner are creating a sanctuary. Called Our Lady of the Apocalypse. And as you can only imagine I have a shit-eating grin on my face. She's creating community space for grief, skill sharing, ritual, beauty, and unlearning finding our way through the darkness together, awake in the burning forest of the world. Oh my goodness. Join me please. In welcoming Gina Clover Hey Gina. Gina: It sounded so good. Who wrote that? Oh man. Monica: I know. Isn't it funny when we have our bios reflected back to us, it's like, oh my goodness, what do we know? Gina: I'm not going to lie. I was listening to your podcast and listening to everyone's bios and, and, uh, I have a strong imposter syndrome. Like I can, I can totally have that. And I'm like listening to all your wonderful guests and I'm like, oh man, everyone sounds so great. And so I just sat there and I was like, where are you at? Like, where does your work come from? What are you working on? How do you live your life? How is your work art? How is your life art? All of a sudden hearing it back. I was like, oh, it came together. Monica: Yeah. And actually it's so you Gina: It's, so me and you know what, and I feel like that's sort of almost the crux of everything I work towards is that it's so me, because my life fell apart and that bio is, is almost a result of like rebuilding my life in a way that I was like, uncompromising. Monica: Yeah. Gina: Like this is it. And it goes back to like, you know, the rites of passage that the work that we've done together, which is I'm ready to live life on my own terms, if not now, than when Monica: That's right. Gina: And it's so nice to hear that bio reflected back because that's what came from my re my own Rite of passage, that by, as a result of the Rite of passage saying I'm living in my seasonal reality. What does it look like? And it looks like living in a church trying to create sanctuary and the burning of the world. Monica: And there's something about the language that lands like so true, because I think that so many of us can live, pretending not to know that the world is burning. It's just not a place that I can breathe. Like I'd rather, you know, language is actually really helpful to me right now because. How I access the truth for me living in this world, the way it is to be present, to kind of sitting in the tension of it without needing to pretend anymore is so important to me. And it's the place that I can breathe, which seems counterintuitive in some ways, but it's not, Gina: It's not. And I think that this is a conversation that I want to be having more and more because I do, I do believe that more and more people want to have these conversations and look something straight in the eye because it's giving us, it's giving us actually more power. It is that counterintuitive like, but we actually feel power when we can name that. Oh, Aren't w we're not going to just mainline hopium anymore. We're going to actually look this squarely in the face and say, okay, now what? And it kind of freeing to be like, we don't know, we don't know, but we know that the answer is going to be in community and honesty. Monica: That's right. Gina: And coming together. And that's ultimately what we're hoping to create is more conversation. Cause it seems like people are ready in a way that even a few years ago it felt like, oh no, we're going to, it's going to be this. It's gonna be this, this solution, this solution. And it's like a real hard, honest gaze at the people in charge. Aren't going to stop what they're doing. Monica: Right. Right. And it's like, nobody's coming to save you. Gina: Nobody's coming to save us. And why I felt like enjoining collapsed the where with rites of passage, which is a, it's a personal invitation to like. Your own security and power. And there's a deep joy that comes from having that inner compass. You're like, oh my God, I got it. While acknowledging that the outer security, the outer world is completely falling apart. And it's almost like you need that. You need that more than ever to navigate the external uncertainty. But, and I really think it's important to like bring yourself into that maturity, knowing that we have to face the external uncertainty. Monica: Well, you know, and here's where I think similar to you, you know, I look at. My own personal apocalypse, right? Like what happened initially as like that dark night of the soul that, you know, is, was like Sophie strands says it's only an initiation if you survive it, which tends to come into my consciousness a lot these days. But, you know, and of course we know that that's not the end of our initiations. We kind of go through these processes of death and rebirth. But what I've found is that that became the moment or the time in my life, where I was able to look the truth in the eye and hold the tension of the truth of being in the paradoxical mass of this human experience. And come to a resolution, at least for myself, in terms of who am I in the matter of the world, falling apart and taking a stand, like a very clear I'd stand at what it is that I believe in and how I want to show up in the world. Gina: And what hard work it is to actually get there. What hard work it is. And I, I feel you in that, like apocalypse of like, okay, now what, because there's so many stages and layers to that because I know, I mean, we've talked about this, but I went through like a public gender discrimination lawsuit. That was, that was really kind of set it reoriented my entire life. And I realized. Kind of a few years away from it. How I needed that because I, I needed to let go of a lot of things in my life that were still capitalistic, patriarchal. Even if I thought it was like a creative solution, I'm like, oh, I'm going to be happy here. I'm going to be happy here. So you have these experiences, apocalyptic things that take away, you're broke. You're humiliated. You're your life falls apart in a very concrete way. But the other aspect and the one we don't get to talk about enough is how there's like a piece of your soul that died because you believed in it. It's like the, the loss of a dream. It's like a real death, it's a real death. And so in addition to all these apocalyptic factors that could, can totally be burning away. You're left with like, who am I? Oh my God, my soul, my soul is broken. My soul is broken. And which is why I think that the rites of passage is so important because it gives us a real framework to actually step into like an orientation and power that acknowledges both the soul death, but a real rebirth to where you can like look at your entirely different way. Monica: For my listeners. Just in case you are wondering what is the work that Gina and I did together, it was the maiden to mother work with Sarah Durham, Wilson and becoming a rites of passage practitioner, bringing women from kind of the wounded, made an archetype and into the archetype of the mature feminine, or what is otherwise known as the mother archetype, which has nothing to do with being a biological mother it's. And there's actually another couple of episodes that I. Tie back to in the show notes, if you're curious. So, so Gina, I, I went back and revisited some of your writing this morning, unsub stack. And I was just, I love, I, I love your, I love your writing. I love, I love the humor that you bring and the levity that you bring, especially that's just, especially when it comes to really what can tend to be dry or very kind of heady subjects, which actually, I think you bring a tremendous amount of heart to, so I just want to celebrate you in that because truly, uh, keep going with your writing girl. You are. Such an amazing writer and your humor is second to none. Gina: I'm like, oh my God, thank you. I mean, I absolutely feel like my calling is to be funny about, about, I want to roast capitalism. I'm like, this is, this is so fun, but it does come from a place of deep caring. Like I can't tell you how, how much I care about. The oppression of other people. I know that sounds like an obvious thing, but I can get how my writing can come across as like it's a little heady. It's a little funny, but it got, it comes from like truly staying awake at night, being like, we have to do things another way. How do we get there? How do I engage people to have this conversation of like, if we keep giving our spirituality and capitalism, it's we we've given it. We've given everything. We've given everything that's actually sacred. Um, how can we be in dialogue together? And I think the best way to do it is to make people laugh. Cause people, people remember when they're laughing, people tend to like want to engage. Yes, Monica: I do. I think I, you know, it's such an undervalued medicine, but it actually allows us to digest. And also, like you said, I love that you said, remember. 'cause for me, it's literally, it brings back those fractured parts together in that glimpse. And it's just like, oh, I remember I like, I remember what I value. I remember who I am. I remember that this world is insane and if I don't laugh or find my laughter, I'll go insane. It's almost the way to be with it as it is without going into the well of despair. Like there's because you know that, like I said, as everything is kind of falling apart, we just, we really need each other in this way where we can remind each other of what it is that we're creating as the world is simultaneously falling apart. So I would love to actually start with. Simply, how do you kind of define capitalism for our listeners? Because I don't want to assume, but through your lens, Gina, just kind of take us in. Yeah. I, Gina: I do think it's important to, to sort of extract a few salient points from like why capitalism is, is killing the planet, crushing it, crushing everything alive on it, because we can, people are like, oh, free markets, the right, your, your rights to make a profit. Isn't that great? You know, so there are these ways we can look at it as a sheer economic mechanism that maybe benefits a few people. But I think the most important things that I like to come back to is that it's an economic system based on like infinite growth. So. It's not going to be able to sustain itself on a finite planet with finite resources. And it is an economic system that is predicated on being able to extract from the earth extract from workers with no real reciprocity or exchange. It's an extractive system. And beyond that, it's a worldview. Like I truly have stopped thinking of it as an economic system and more of a brain disease that we're all kind of locked in. One that kind of keeps Monica: Like, like Wetico Gina: Yes, exactly. That's exactly. That's exactly. It. It's a brain disease that keeps us in a framework of colonization of taking and not giving back truly the opposite of like a sacred exchange. Even though I feel like its proponents trying to act like, oh, you know, it's free, it's free markets. Uh, just, but really it's, it's more taking away. The agency and personhood, which is why I like to replace it with like my animus worldview, which is like, I actually want to come into relationship with all living things. Because when you start to give personhood to things, you see them as totally separate from you and totally valid to be here on this planet. And capitalism absolutely takes away our ability to see things as something other than monetary value. Like what can we get from it? Monica: Right. It's how my father used to define what a cynic was, who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Gina: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and it keeps us exploiting women, certainly like free labor is part of capitalism, a system that really takes advantage of anything and everything for the benefit of the few capitalism is. The accumulation of capital and capital wants capital. And it's just going to keep consolidating and consolidating. It's not, it's not a system that will ever. Share resources. It'll keep people in scarcity. And it's funny, cause I feel like I have conversations and these are people that, you know, are pro pro-union and you know, like, oh, think of how things have gotten better over time. And it's like, yeah, sure. We're on some level we can, we can go through everything and look at the way things have gotten better. But all of that was actually anticapitalist like my whole thing is like, I actually think everyone deep down, unless you're a billionaire is actually anticapitalist. And I think there's this weird messaging where capitalism is the system where we allow. Union protests and all these things. And it's like, no, these are actually deeply I capitalist movements. Um, it's not a part it's that they're not a part of the system. Monica: Right. Gina: You know, even though, you know, capitalism ties a brand itself, it's like, oh, we're just so open. But it's like, no, capitalism is actually the accumulation of capital. Monica: Yeah. And Gina, because I know, you know, and you had shared that you come from a very corporate background. When did you kind of start to really kind of see the system? Like, I feel like for a lot of us, there's this moment or series of moments, or maybe it's these series of glimpses where the veil lifts for a moment and we're able to be like, wait a minute. And if it happens enough over time, that kind of entire system becomes revealed. And you're like, what? Gina: Oh God, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's like an, it's like an onion. It's like nothing dot where you're like, oh God, oh God, it's all going. And that's for the real, you feel like you have no firm footing. Like it's really hard to have your world turned upside. I mean, it is the apocalypse. You're like, oh my God, the world, the world is, I thought I understood it. It doesn't exist. And that's a terrifying place to be, but I will say. You know, because this does tie into a lawsuit where I can't all the details. I will say that the thing that was most shocking to me is that this all took place in an environment that was supposed to be super supportive to artists and to people who there was a lot of lip service around inclusivity and speaking up. And so I think for me, the shocking thing was to see, to see it be a lie Monica: Well, and the way that I'm thinking about it, it's like to see that it was just, it was the same system wearing a disguise. Gina: Yes, exactly. And I think that that was the most heartbreaking part of it was that I believed, I believe so hard. And I think that. It does make you a little cynical. And I think I've spent the past few years unpacking a lot of cynicism. When I see messaging from anybody at this point, that's a for-profit company talking about inclusivity because I think inclusivity is radically different than any. Organization can, can actually maintain if they actually wanted to, this is to any company. I mean, if you're a corporation wanting to be inclusive, you'd really have to like disband your corporation and make it a co-op or something, you know? I mean, this is Monica: like hierarchies do not really just by their very nature are not inclusive. Gina: Exactly, exactly. And so, so really just, I feel just like banging the drum and just be like, we're not, we're not we're wrong road, wrong road, you know, like we keep trying to put band-aids on things. Well, like the arm is like falling off and it's like, we're too late, too late. We have to, we have to help people that are actually getting crushed and stop with those silly messaging around, you know, we have social impact, you know, just these phrases that are so meaningless when really they're, they're there to protect the investor. It's a protecting investors. And I think that that's what I really came away with was that I didn't, I didn't quite understand the allegiance to investors. And now even I, I hear like, you know, whether it's an arts organization or like all these good foundations that like donate VC money, you know, I'm really sick of like benevolent, rich people being the ones to solve the, I mean, how is that going? How's that going for us? Cause that's really, our system now is benevolent rich people. We're just waiting on them to like make things better. Monica: I recently had this revelation, um, you know, I love archetypes and Carolyn Myss talks about the archetype of the prostitute. And what gets really interesting about that archetype is when you start to look at not through the lens of an actual sex worker here, this is not what I'm talking about, but from this place where you realize. That at some level, somebody sold their soul. It's like your individual, right. To doing something differently, got bought. And is now outside of you, you no longer have agency, do you no longer have power? It's it's what your shareholders, and this is what happens time and time again. And we see it of course, with so many things and we don't realize the implications until we realize the implications. Gina: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what was really heartbreaking to me. And my partner is we were like, oh God, we thought we'd found a safe Harbor. We thought we'd found like a place where it was, it wasn't business as usual. And, uh, but you don't realize it until it, it comes for you. And I think that that's what almost makes me bummed out that I feel like a little slow on the uptake because. It wasn't until it happened to me that I was like, oh, I get it. And, and I think that the that's another reason why I, I try and write as much as possible about this is because Intel, it, you can find out about everything before it happens to you personally, you just have to like, stay frosty, stay sharp, and like really, really care about this because we do a good job. I mean, that's capitalism. Ability is to package and sell things. I mean, we are a consumerist country. It's like, that is what we're here to do is, uh, be good consumers. And so of course it's going to be, slickly packaged. And it's why I write about spirituality because I feel, I feel like it is sacred to me. So I want to set it apart from capitalism, but it becomes so estheticized, it becomes so easy to just like commodify it and fell it away on Instagram. And it's more like setting boundaries about the things that actually matter and the ways in which we're just participating in a machine that's never going to stop. It's the machine that's killing the planet and it's, I care so much. I really care. So Monica: Well, I think that that part of the beauty of having a personal apocalypse is you get very clear about, first of all, I often say like, I almost had to lose my life to choose my life because for the longest time, I think. That I was living in this culture of make-believe meaning I was pretending that I could just live this way and play the game, so to speak and wear the mask without realizing that it was costing me, my soul, my integrity, my voice, my a liveliness. And there's a certain naivete city. When you have been raised and conditioned and programmed in a certain way. That it's kind of like what you were talking about when the onion starts to appeal back, you're actually horrified by how, as you said, like I'm a little, like, whatever, because I was slow on the uptake, but I also have so much compassion for so many of us who it's like the people we trusted most in the world who trusted the people that they trusted most in the world who trusted the people they trusted most in the world, but we're all a product of this conditioning and programming that goes back generations. And I do believe in an assert that we are the generation and this time in our evolution and our involute mission is creating this new portal. That is an opportunity to create something new. And this is where I would love to really start to. Talk about where your vision is, where your heart is, where your values are, because I'm so enrolled in your vision. And as all of us kind of go through this period of devastation, destruction, despair, personal apocalypse, I want to just remind everybody that this is happening for us. Remember, like, I always say that it's happening for us. We can sit there and be, continue to play the victim. But if we can also just recognize that as things get revealed. It's an opportunity to feel it and heal it and start to kind of reorder the world, re inhabit ourselves, reimagine, reclaim there's all of these rewords that come up in this space because when I really tap into the true potential of these times, I'm like, yeah, burn it down, keep falling down. I'm like, yes. And people are like, are you crazy? Like, so, and, and don't get me wrong. Like I am. Sitting here celebrating when I see people hurting, that's not the point. It's the systems that I know need to fall apart in order for us to actually get to the place. And you said it Gina it's like until it personally happens to us, it's almost like we can't imagine something different. And that's part of the programming. I want to point this out. Part of the programming is to actually steal your imagination because your imagination and your ability to dream a different dream is what makes it possible for you to create something new. So part of the programming. Taking away your capacity to imagine something different. And so as things fall apart, what starts to happen is you start to practice what it is to imagine what you do want, and that develops that muscle for what you want to create next. And when you're creating and you're doing it from a fully embodied place that knows that is in touch with your clear values, you're going to create something beautiful. So, anyway, I just needed to say that. Gina: No, no, that's perfect. I mean, that's exactly it because you have to. I mean, everything has to fail in order for you to reorient because you, you are programmed to keep going back. You, you know, like it's just, we're plugged in. We're plugged into that matrix. And when did, when the plug starts to come out, you're like, well, now where do I go? Cause you know, there's some, some weird other matrixes that are ready to plug you in, you know, but who are the bedfellows? That's always the question. Um, whether that fellows, it takes a long time to actually sit there and be like, okay, I guess this isn't going to work out. I guess this isn't going to work out and to kind of take the time. And that's, that's the other critical piece of this is that we live in a machine that gives us no time. We have to keep going. We have to keep going. And it's been really painful. To try and get my life off the ground at all. It's just been like, God, it's not working, but I'm like, I have to keep making money. I ha I don't have to chance to take a breath. And so it's been really interesting to see the ways in which whether by choice or not by choice, I've carved out space to actually be able to think about these things. And I feel a lot of compassion for people that if they're busy with family, if they're busy with making money, it's like, it's so hard to actually create the space and the bandwidth in your life to, to take a long look at how you're living. And which is another reason why I feel this like importance to write, because I actually have created space where I'm like, oh, this is what it looks like when you actually get to sit with something for awhile and you don't have to rush into the next thing because the machine wants us tired. It wants us wants us hustling. It wants us to not actually fit and think about these things. But to get to your question of like how we've reoriented, it was continually. It's not unrelated to the continual housing problems in this country and the way that that is another place that wealth is consolidating. I've started to really. Consider it pretty dark that like Zillow just buys like corporations buy huge slots of homes. And that we actually think it's very normal to just have investment properties. There's an artist listserv that I look at for homes sometimes in the Hudson valley. And over the past year, it's changed from real estate to real estate and opportunities. And just starting to notice the language of how, like we have an increasing houseless Ms. Crisis in this country. And we still see living in a home as an opportunity for someone to make money and how that starting to not sit well with me as I like really unwind from all of this. And so, yeah, we moved into a church and it's funny cause my partner, when our lives first fell apart, probably in like 2019, he started having this idea for like the Anthropocene church. She was like the Anthropocene church, you know, we really liked the idea of. The church just implied like a sanctuary, like a safe space. Obviously there's like a lot of loaded baggage, but we did like this idea that like a church takes those takes in the, the downtrodden and the dispossessed. So it was weird that like a year ago we just started being like, I don't know, maybe we should go check out the Hudson valley. Like it was an area we hadn't, he lived here many years ago, but I'm, I lived in LA for like 15 years. So I'm not really that familiar with the area, but all of a sudden there was like a listing for a church. And it was an art, a church that had been converted into an art space and my partners in installation artist. And we're like, we could go do some art there, but in my heart, I was just like, oh, I could just feel into the church. And I was like, I just feel like the space wants like worship. It wants praise. And, and I, you know, my personal practice, I love singing in spaces. I love. And chanting them to life and the way that they enchant me to life when I really allow that to happen. So I just felt that there was something calling us to this space and it's kind of evolved because we did come here as artists to like, do an installation, which we're going to be doing this summer. And we're having, um, musicians come up from Austin and, and it, it should be really fun and beautiful, but, but it is centered around climate grief. I think that we've become really clear that what people actually want right now is places to have these honest conversations to start to come together as a, we, we build and to feel these emotions together, because especially with what we personally gone through, it took a lot of, of soul searching. It wasn't just, oh, we're broke it. Wasn't just, oh, we're going through like a legal situation. It wasn't just, we can't find a home. It was holy shit. Our hearts are broken. Our hearts are devastated. We lost something that we believed in and that requires some. A deep soul searching to come into hope, enjoy again for the worlds you live in. And so what we really want is a community and that's, that's where we know we have to start because we need to do this together. And that, and that comes from like just a straight up like union family background. It's like, we have to circle up. We have to come together. And that involves like art and it involves skill sharing. It involves like listening. Cause everyone has a unique, like lived life experience that offers a different perspective. I think that we, well, it's funny. My, my partner, he loves the, the subreddits for like collapsed and prep and he like follows them and he's like, you know, you think it might be a lot of like people with guns. And there are, you know, that, that kind of like rural person with the gun, but he's like the really good preppers. They all know that what you actually need is community. And that's like, it doesn't matter how much you stockpile, what you actually need is community. And so we're really grateful to have this space that starting to bring together. And there's a lot of really interesting like thinkers and podcasts about, about this subject and we're, yes, we're so excited and including people like Sophie Strand, I love her. Like everyone is starting to think of mycellally only about how to, how to cross-pollinate start to breathe into this like new network and new way of living. It's just done alongside this horrible reality that a lot of people, as these systems collapse are going to suffer and it's the people with the least amount of money and the least amount of power that will suffer the most. Monica: And just for my listeners, I just want to kind of give a little bit more background on Anthropocene and what it is, and maybe Gina, you want to do that, but I had pulled up kind of a definition. Do you want me to read it? Sure. Yeah. So the Anthropocene is an, is a new present day. Epoch in which scientists say we have significantly altered the earth through human activity. These changes include global warming habitat loss changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Oceans and soil and animal extinctions, although the new epoch has yet to be officially. I, that makes me laugh officially declared. I think we all know the world is fucking burning. Okay. So there's that Gina: I know. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're always waiting on them to catch up with what we all know. Monica: Yeah. Wow. Again, like I there's so many intersecting kinds of. Things here. Talk about mycelium, but you know, it's just Charles Eisenstein calls this period, the space between stories. And there's a lot of re-imagining to go back to what we were talking about before kind of going on. And so one of the reasons I really wanted to bring Gina on was I think it's so important for us to be exposed to people who are actively practicing re-imagining and thinking about what it is they want and the community that they want to create. And I also want to point out. This podcast episode might be disturbing for some people, right? It's like what we're talking about prepping, but here's the part about pretending not to know in this culture is that if we're tuned in to mainstream narratives, you're not gonna, you know, yeah. You're kind of faced with the doom and gloom in everything that's happening in the world, but it's also a distraction. I just want to point out it's a distraction to keep you plugged in to that matrix that continues to deny that we need to do anything different and it's. One of the things that we start to discover as we have our personal apocalypse is there's a lot of people who have been having this conversation for a very long time and have actually been in a lot of ways, preparing for the inevitable. And I don't think that that's a dooms day, or I think that somebody who is proactively preparing for things that we've forgotten how to prepare for and forgotten how to do as human beings, who are integrated in their body and connected to the earth. Gina: And that's a perfect way of saying it. And I think that that's, but I, I just really have to say, I feel so much better when I'm really living that truth. I think I spent years consuming all of the right liberal media and. All it is, is naming the symptoms of the disease, but not naming a disease, because if you name the disease, it really compromises shareholder and investor interest. So it's like, all we do is talk about the symptoms of the disease and never named the disease. And I'm like, oh, now that I've named it, I actually wake up much less depressed because I feel like, oh, I'm actually orienting towards the right thing rather than just being in despair. Monica: And what are you calling and what are you naming the disease? Gina: I mean, capitalism, it's the one I come back to, but you could say patriarchy, you could say colonialism. I mean, it's all the umbrella of the society in which we live in the D the spell that we're under the spell of modernity, the spell of this civilization. Monica: Right. And what I call the trance, the trance. Gina: Yeah. This, this spell that we're under. It's just that the. Economics of capitalism or the things accelerating destruction on the, on the planet. But yeah, I mean, truly with our vision, especially as. The housing crisis. That just feels like it's going to get worse, especially as like there's going to be increased migration with climate change for people leaving the Southwest is how do we, how do we set up systems that help people get affordable housing? Cause it's not going to get easier for people to like step into homeownership. And so, you know, we're starting to be like, how can we, how can we set up a legal entity? That's like a co-op or a nonprofit that allows people to like buy in and land together. You know, we really are starting to, once you do break that spell, you're like, okay, I'm just one person. But if enough people are having this conversation and enough people pull their resources together, that's how we can make a difference. And it's how can we, it's how I feel like I can help set up the younger generations for success. What are the ways in which I can like move the needle a little bit, which on most days I feel very helpless, but with people like-minded people like, I know that this is. We want to be doing anyway. It feels so much better to be in community than to be in isolation. Monica: Exactly. There's I think so much that gets revealed inside of community. Not the least of which is how many individual gifts we each bring that then gets shared in terms of, you know, we talked earlier or we mentioned, you know, kind of the lack of reciprocity, but when we're in true community and we're in true collaboration and we're in true, co-creation, there's like, I can't think of anything that is more fulfilling and life-giving, which brings me into kind of this subject of animism that you're so passionate about. Gina: Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, I started moving away from the term spiritual. I mean, I write about this on my sub -stack, but I maybe it's because I'm on Instagram. But spirituality and Instagram have been a really unholy Alliance for me to the point where I don't actually know what it means to be spiritual anymore. Cause it seems like if you're posting about the cards or pulling, or you just mentioned you did I Wasco one weekend or you dress a certain way and you go to like a brave with cacao, like I don't really know what it means to be spiritual. And so I really stripped back to like, what's personal to me, which is where am I in devotion? Where am I in ritual and a really private and sacred way, but where am I? What fosters my absolute reverence and connection and stopping really sitting with being incarnated on the planet because I definitely have my relationship to the universe of my guides and spirit. I'm not here to disembody, to disassociate. I'm here to be in the muck and the mud, and to be in love with the world around me, the world that I see that suffering. And so the more I take my language from spirituality into animism, the more I'm constantly oriented towards a living, breathing relationship for everything around me and feeling it, feeling it's magic. And I started doing that when I, we were spending, uh, a few months out at, um, my partner's cabin, just because we didn't have any place to live, I guess we'll go live in the woods, uh, cause his family's cabin. And I think that this starts with a lot of people that started to work with like Landon Chapman and animism. But you start to go out in the forest and you start thing and I would start to be like, What do you want to hear? What do you want to like say through me and starting to really move with the trees and, and it was so simple and I would always do this little voice go. Finally, you're getting. Oh, the monkeys are supposed to be doing on this planet, just singing and worshiping. And so when I think of my own personal animistic practices, it comes back to where am I in absolute reverence and worship with every step towards the living thing around me. And the more I do it, the more I see life reflected back at me, it's not an inanimate world. And I think that that's one of the diseases of capitalism is seeing the world as some inanimate thing we extract from. But it's like, no, I see everything is teaming with life too. I mean, I get emotional when I say it, but it's, I feel the pulsing life that wants to talk to us that once, like when you, when you love something, it reveals its magic and that's how you really coax it out. And it's like, how much love can I show this? How much love can I show anything? Whether it's, whether it's a family member, whether it's, whether it's a bird, whether it's a tree and when can I start to sing to it. So it will sing back to me. And that to me, The relationship I try and cultivate, Monica: so, so, so beautiful. And yeah, I really, I really share your emotion there. I think back to a time in my life where I was dead inside. And so when you're dead inside you, you don't resonate with anything else. You know, like there's the, it's like that old ad age where now it's escaping me, but it's, it's this idea of like, if you, if you're not feeling the depth of your sorrow, nor are you feeling the. Incredible capacity of your joy. And that's the same with being in relationship with other living things or spirit that animates each thing is that you have to be alive in yourself in order to, you have to be aware of your own song to recognize that each and every thing has its own song. Absolutely. I love the way that you just described that Gina, how beautiful. Gina: It's been really special. And I feel, I mean, I love talking about it, but it also feels private to me. And I think that that's the other sort of like spectacle of like capitalism and spirituality is it becomes like a commodity and there's just no way for me to commodify this, just like this is, Monica: Yeah. It also, there's a performative aspect to it. Gina: Oh yeah. Monica: Right. So I knew, I knew I was like gonna like touch right in on that. Yeah, Gina: Absolutely. Yes, definitely. And I think, especially as we start to be role models and at our, at our age, as we Sage, as we saved, I never, I already felt like when I was in my twenties being pro looking a certain way on social media with like a thing. And the last thing I want that is for someone to also bring that to their spirituality, you know, like, oh, I have to be wearing the right goddess dress with the right filter at the right beach. She and my feather, you know, like. Stripping it all away back to something very private, but we, but that requires us to strip away the brain disease of capitalism that tells us we have to commodify everything, every aspect of ourselves, which is why I named my sub-second girl has no brand because I struggled with this. I was like, God, I'm going to aesthetic person. I like things that look attractive. Like I certainly can like come up with a brand. Like I can certainly take a hot photo shoot of myself, but it just made me feel so sick to my stomach to do it. And I was like, oh, it's because I don't want to commodify something so special to me. It's because, I mean, it's because I'm not selling you anything. Right. And I think that that's the other spell of mundanity. It's the spell of aspiration, which we live in as consumers is like, if I buy this person's mastermind, I will make money. If I buy this person's, you know, priestess course I too will be free and have a great relationship. I think we've really taken the American dream of aspiration and really put it into spirituality. Monica: Yeah. Well said, well said I want to go back for a minute, Gina, because I want to, I also want to connect the dots here with the maiden to mother work, because I know that there's a way that this very much kind of fits into how you work with others. So without saying too much there, I just wanted to get curious with you about what spoke to you personally about that work, because now knowing you and knowing that work so deeply, I can see so much more. Gina: Yeah. Monica: Not only, you know, as it relates to you, but I'm seeing. I don't know, I'm just, I'm seeing some things that I hadn't seen even when we were doing the teacher training and like, as time has gone on and I have some perspective, I'm like, oh, holy shit. You know, like there's so much more here in terms of like doing this work in these rites of passage. So, you Gina: know, what's funny is the thing that drew me to Sarah's work. And obviously like I've loved doing this training with you and I it's been so fun to watch all of us have these like really big arcs and where we're all going. Like, it's very fun to see. But the funny thing is, is I was simply drawn to her work because when I turned 41, I started becoming obsessed with aging and I didn't have any. And I think that that's like an important thing to keep in mind is that a lot of us come to this work because we are in the plastic spring and we don't know we're in the plastic spring of like, I'm trying to hang on to my youth. It doesn't feel right, but I don't know what else to do. And I was, and it was, my partner was even like, uh, cause I was like, I'm obsessed with my face. He's like, I know he's like, you're not normally like this. And I could feel, I could feel that there was no end in sight. Like this was just ed. Like I'm suddenly like, oh my God, I'm obsessed with myself. And I didn't, I knew it was wrong. I was like, this isn't how I've been in the past, but I didn't know how to confront reorienting. And this was also alongside my life falling apart, you know, when I was about 38. So, so it was kind of just. Where are we, what are we going to be doing? Like, how are we just like sad, broken hate in our faces for the next 40 years? Like, what are we doing? So I was really grateful to find this because I was, I was seeing someone that was like using language, like how I just saw the messaging. So clearly that I was like, oh, we're training. We've all been indoctrinated into hating ourselves at a certain point. And we're going to just fill our faces to like freeze it so we can like fit in into society, you know? And because I felt that pressure where I was like, oh God, I'm used to having a certain voice. I don't know what to do if like, I look different because that's my worth. Monica: Right. That's my worth. That's my value. Gina: That's my value. And so it's funny to be like coming, cause this was Y you know, over a year ago at this, that, uh, I had maybe like a couple of years ago that I had found Sarah's work, but it was, it was just, it was just funny how, like, What brought me there, which was like a fear of aging, which is the point of this work it's to get past that. So then all this other stuff like actually comes out. And I think that that is like a Testament to like the power of, of this work and why it's so important for women to have this rites of passage. Because once you actually get past that, like plastic spring, my worth is externalized. And again, I spent my, my entire adult life in LA, too, which I love very much, but I see the ways in which that amplifies it. But that once you actually get past it, it's like, oh, there's this, that wants to come out. You know? So it's funny, we're having this like heavy conversation about all of these things, but I'm like, I feel joy. I've never felt before because what freedom to like express this to be like, I care so deeply about this, but I'm actually able to maneuver in ways that allow me to like speak on it, write on it, connect with people on it. Like that is joyful. Monica: Yeah, I'm going to try to encapsulate this, but what I'm hearing you say is that, like, it was actually the superficial fears and worries that became the magnet to the deep work. And that there's that kind of paradox. Is this actually like, because the truth is underneath kind of the superficial, right? Which feels very real. It feels very deep. It feels very scary. And it, and it is, Gina: It is absolutely Monica: By the way, I just want to point out that it runs so deeply. It's actually embedded in our psyches. And so what happens, and, and I want to point this out for our listeners, because they might be like what what's plastic spring right. And like, so what Gina's pointing to is that we've been talking about the conditioning, the matrix, the programming, the trance, right? I'm always talking about the trance fund, worthiness us. What she's pointing to is. Who we are when we're in wounded maiden. It's like, we can't see, we know something's wrong. We actually think it's us, by the way, first of all. But we also know that there's something actually also deeply wrong with the world, but we can't quite get our fingers. Like we can't quite like surface at all. We might even know that it's patriarchy or we might even know, but we don't know how to orient ourselves in all of it. And so what happens when you start doing this work and you start to understand that there are certain symptoms that the wounded maiden exhibit, right? Because I want to point to the fact that women are inculturated. To be obsessed with how we appear. We are obsessed to equate our value with our exterior appearance and everything. Even if you're listening and you're like, oh, that's not me. That's not me. I guarantee you that there are hooks in you that once you follow those hooks back to their origin, you're like, oh my goodness, I have it too. Cause nobody escapes this nobody. And so when you've been steeped like a teabag as a female or as a woman in patriarchy, you basically are entranced in what I call this soup of unworthiness, which is that when you start realizing something like your value starts to be compromised because things are changing and. You've equated your value or you've commodified yourself, right? Like, I don't know how else to explain this. You start realizing like, oh my gosh, like I'm in trouble. Like, because you become obsessed with like, what's going to happen to me. My currency is gone like no longer. Now I'm becoming invisible in the world. And if I can't be seen, then clearly I'm not valued. Then clearly I'm not here. Like there's so much in this. I'm just using the appearance as one part of it. But what we also come to realize is that we've been suspended almost like arrested development, which is exactly where patriarchy wants women to be. Because when we're so distracted by our own not enoughness, we actually can't be the powerful potent fully. Permissioned women. We actually really are. When we cross over into our birthright, the normal kind of process that we would go through when we were connected through our indigenous lineages or through in our, you know, I don't even know how to say it. Ancestral lands of origin were, you know, we had rites of passage that were demarcations from childhood into adulthood, into maturity. And this culture, we tend to want to keep people in an immature state, which is why you have so many men who are still boys and why you have so many women who are still actually what we call wounded maiden. Gina: Yeah. And I, and I think it is important to point out that probably all of us, and this is how subtle the hooks are, is that all of us would probably acknowledge that there's patriarchal beauty standards and that they're like bullshit. You know, all of us would probably be like, I know that, I know that. And that's why it's so insidious when you just slowly start to feel like your face is changing and why is this so upsetting? And why am I so upset? Because I can't control it. And I was told this one thing about myself was like the peak of my worthiness. And so it's weird to say, I knew that I knew it was bullshit, and yet I still couldn't do anything about it. And that's because there was no viable alternative. Right. I didn't know. And I, and I, it goes again to community. I didn't know how to deal with it on my own. And it wasn't until I started like actually diving into. You know, the heroine's journey and like the stages of initiation. And I was like, oh, I love this kind of stuff. I love talking about life this way. Monica: Okay. Well it's because it's, it's finally makes sense. Right? It's like, this is the, this is the mythology that I think has been like hiding in plain sight. Is that there's this other way of. There are multiple other ways, but there is some really helpful ways to be able to orient ourselves in the world and to see kind of the system at work, as it pertains to our lives. And as it pertains to the stages of development that are actually our birthright and that this is part of the trans and surfacing, the trans and revealing the trans is what can heal the trans. And so what I'm hearing is that you're trans of unworthiness actually got disrupted by your face changing. Gina: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally. And it was. It was really funny and I feel very grateful that I was, I just had the recognition cause I, I was like to my partner, I was like, I'm not normally like this. And I'm really preoccupied with something that feels like it's just going to consume me until it eats me alive. I'm glad that I had the wherewithal to like, say it out loud before I like went and got like a bunch of fillers and felt like I had to overcompensate, you know, instead I felt, I didn't, I knew I didn't want to do that. So it's like, I, I feel a lot of compassion, especially towards women that don't, that don't feel like they need to, because I, I get that. Monica: I get that and I don't want it. There's no judgment here. Gina: Yeah. There's no judgment about that, but it's, uh, it's more just like, God, I just, I don't know if that path is for me, but I don't know what the path is. And so I was lucky to come to this program that had a lot of tools, but then it just became so much richer and deeper and kind of activated something that was already. Progressing because of how my life had been going. So it kind of dovetailed nicely that I, you know, that the way life was radicalizing me and I was letting it radicalize me. I then came into this very like incredible community of women that also was like, here are the ways the life is radicalized me. And we just all kind of are like, let's, let's do this. And, and it's just been like, you know, we talk about these invitations into the underworld, which are really the life's invitations to like radicalize you and get you back to something outside of consumer hustle, capitalist culture. And whether it is that like loss of a relationship loss of a job or. Uh, home and just to really allow it to, to change you. And I think that that has been the hardest part, but the most important piece is that I didn't resist. I mean, I cried a lot. I was a mess. I had meltdowns all the time, but, Monica: well, but here's what got revealed is like, that was, you were on your way back to your alive Venus. Gina: That's right. I mean, that's the thing about. Oh, my God. I feel so alive. And it's so funny. Cause I'll have moments where I'm like, I just feel so dead inside and I just want to feel alive. Like even in the suffering, I'm like so much more alive than when I was everything was stable or, you know, Monica: I'm fine. Gina: Everything was fine. Yeah. It's just been really beautiful to just be like, I want to experience it all. And again, it goes back to like an animistic relationship where it's like, I want the alive in us of everything and, and it's that mother archetype of like, bring me your suffering. I can take it. You know, I live my own grief. I do building a muscle and I think it's, you know, it's been years of being in the trenches of like having things, not come together and, and sitting with, uh, my own ego around that and being like, okay, I don't want much other than for me to be strong enough to do my mission. That's it. That's my prayer. Like I don't need to manifest much except the strength to like keep going well. Monica: And that's just, it. In the unbecoming process, you were able to get to what you now kind of it's like the passion that it's like the center of the center of the alive newness is the passion that you now have to serve in clarity for other women, you know, in men. But you know what I'm saying? It's like, it becomes kind of the, the eye of the needle that you have to go through in order to really become. Aligned with your true self, which is, you know, I always say like, when we align, we are divine and it's that moment where you really understand that you're human and you're divine. It's like, it's all right here in the same space, but to be fully alive in it is the alignment. Gina: Yeah. And no one can take that from you. Like no one can take it. It's it's so worth fighting for people can take your money. People can take any number of things, but God, when you have that, it's like yours, you like died for it. You know, you get it. Monica: And then like, nobody can you're right. Cause like nobody has anything on you. Cause you know the worst that can happen. It already did. Gina: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Definitely. Monica: It makes you fearless in a way, even though you, you know, of course still occasionally have fear, but. Oh, yeah, for sure. So Gina, I want to be sure, like, I'm like, I'm hoping that I'm doing this conversation justice. Cause of course I love your mind and your heart, but what I really also want our listeners to hear is just what, how you serve now. And what, if anything, where can they learn more about you and what do you want to share with them? I really appreciate that Monica, like, it's so generous of you and this has been so good. If anything, I hope I did justice to your podcast. I think it's amazing. The variety of things you like share with everyone. It's a real service. So I just hope I, uh, I brought something So much. I've loved this. I'm like, are you kidding me? We're already like, almost a time in Italy. Gina: Just that if anyone is ever interested in. And collaborating my partner and I, we are, we're truly trying to build something that is, is for everyone. And that creates a sanctuary and a place in a place where like, people are actually looking for sanctuary. People are suffering. We want people to come and find a place to grieve, but also to worship and sing together. And we want to bring together people that have skills to share like tea. We want to, we all want to be in the learning and the unlearning together. So we of course want anyone to reach out to. We're getting a website up for this particular space, but there's also anthropocene.church if people want to reach out. And then of course my sub stock is where I like to have all my fire. That's where I keep my internet plane from entering the revolution. I feel like this has been a really, a really wonderful way for me to like synthesize a lot of the things that I've studied for the past 20 years since I've kind of been on a spiritual path, but also academically, I think it's really, really fun way to inspire people. And like you said, if you want to come laugh and, uh, and mad, and it's funny at the same time, obviously like I, that is in place, it's like really fun. That I, that I want to share and continue to share from the heart and I'm working on my next piece and it's, uh, I get really excited. It feels it starts to come through me and it in a really like visceral way. And, um, it's a fun place as a professional writer for many years. It's fun to finally have an opportunity to. To get nervous to publish because normally I'm like, I'm a writer for hire. I can write whatever you want. But when I publish these, I get like, oh God, it's so PR I feel so vulnerable. I'm like, I hope everybody likes it. I hope it brings out like the squishy a little underbelly me because I care so much about this, but no, I, what I really want is that everyone joined in this conversation, you know, I, I do get that it's heavy and I do get that. It can be intense because it requires us to grapple with the places we willfully put on blinders. I know that I have that those places and the places that the blinders got ripped off with painful for me, but it's easier when we do it together. And when we can laugh too, because we're just getting started, like, this is, this is the. This is the path. This is the past for all of us. Monica: It's saying, I always say, and I'm sure you know this, but I'm like the say yes to the mass, because this is the path. And if we can't laugh our way through it in our own human drama, it's like, we're screwed. So we have each other. And I think part of what we're learning, how to do is to hold space and grace for messes. Gina: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And people, people are going to need a, like I'm well aware of the ways in which I have so much privilege. And if I can leverage that in any way to help anyone else, that's the only thing I care about. Monica: Yeah. And you also. Available for coaching, correct? Yeah. Yeah. I both, as a Rite of passage guides and I do a plant medicine integration, which, which funny enough, the rites of passage really dovetail into that. I mean, think about the invitation into the unknown and you know, the dissolving of the ego coming back together and the re reorientation process afterwards. So it's been really fun to like, use that piece of it . For sure. I love that. So Gina, if there's any question that I didn't ask that you would have wanted me to ask, what would it have been anything come up for you or any last thoughts that you want to share? Gina: I guess nothing's coming to mind, except just to remember to have compassion for all of us wherever we are on this path. You know, especially when I write my sub stack, I feel. Fiery, but always knowing that we are all doing the best we can. And to just really remember to be reverent and worshipful to every everyone and everything, we come across, everything just wants to be sung to and love. And that's how we find the magic. Monica: Well, this has just been such a beautiful conversation in so many ways. I love that we got a chance to do it. We spontaneously kind of set this up, so yeah. And I think that's the way it had to happen. Gina: No, I know I'm not going to live in so nervous about this. I was like, I hope I don't mess this up. I have nothing prepared, Monica: But oh my gosh. So good. So, so happy. And of course I adore you and for our listeners, I'll be sure to put all of Gina's links in the show notes. And until next time more to be revealed, we hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us at jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift subscribed to our mailing list or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.